Canada, many countries throughout Europe, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and India are some of the hotspots of the international green building movement. The U.S. Green Building Council, which was started by American private businesses who sought to green the building industry, has created the World Green Building Council http://www.worldgbc.org/ . There will soon be a Canadian and Indian green building council, amongst half a dozen other countries who are now adopting the LEED standards and ratings that the U.S. Green Building Council created. We may soon see uniform, internationally-recognized standards for green building.
The International Initiative for Sustainable Built Environment (IISBE) has a green building policies network, which has created a database comprised of countries around the world who are building green. The database lists the policies of many local residential green building programs and seeks to compile green building standards and strategies from across the globe.
The international green building movement will be flourishing in the next few years, creating a vocabulary regarding sustainability, proper use of energy, water, power, resources, & Green House Metrics thereby providing the human race with a lasting and responsible standard for global green housing in the future.